After I wrote the post on Jesus and the church BBQ, I received the following message from a dear friend: "I was reading your blog and had some questions for you regarding what you said about eating pork. First, I'm not arguing for or against your position I'm just asking questions. Do you believe that old testament laws are divided into categories such as sacrificial laws, moral laws, dietary laws etc..? My next question is do you practice all of these laws in your everyday life..i.e not cutting the hair on the sides of your head, having your wife sleep in another bed when she is unclean, wearing clothes made of only one fiber and so on?"
My response: "Thanks for asking ****. It will be hard to give you a detailed answer in a message format, but I will try. Perhaps we can talk some time by phone. One of my purposes is not to tell people what to eat. Instead, I am simply pointing out that there is a difference between the life Jesus lived and the lifestyles of the church that claims to follow Him. I'm not saying that that is wrong; only that a tension exists between what Jesus did and what the church does. First century discipleship required that if you were a disciple then you strictly did what your master did. The church claims to follow Jesus but has changed some of the rules. Regarding the distinctions in the types of laws, I don't think you will find that in the Bible. They were created by Gentile theologians to explain away the Jewish law. I can go into greater detail at a later time. I try to obey the Torah, not because I have to to be saved but because I want to because my Savior did. Our family has Friday night Shabbat services every week. I do my best not to do any work on the Sabbath. I don't eat pork, shell fish, or camels either.When my wife is unclean I do not touch her. Frankly, I had not thought about my hair. The things I do, I do to demonstrate my love for YHVH. My salvation is by grace through faith. This is about obedience. It is a journey and we are all walking it out the best we can. I hope this short message gives you some greater insight into my thinking and my actions."
I wanted to respond to the inquiry about the cutting of hair and the prohibition of wearing wool and linen. First, the prohibition of not cutting the hair on the sides of your head is found in Leviticus 19:27. Leviticus 19:27 says: "Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard." Is this a prohibition that applies today to followers of YHVH? In Bible days, it was a practice of the heathen to leave only a crown of hair on the top of the head to honor their deity. For example, the pagans would show honor to their deity Orotal by cutting the hair away from the temples in a circular form. If you can imagine what is called a "bowl cut" you have the general idea. Think of a bowl being placed on the head and all hair not covered by the bowl being shaved off. The Torah is commanding the believers of that time and culture not to imitate the practices of the heathen. They are not to cut their hair to give the same appearance as the unbelievers. In our society, we do not face the same issue. I am unaware of any group that does this today so that I do not have the issue covered by Leviticus 19:27. I am not prohibited from having my sideburns cut. However, I should apply the principle of avoiding those practices that imitate heathen or pagan lifestles.
Second, am I prohibited from wearing clothes that contain wool and linen? Deuteronomy 22:11 says: "Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together." This concerns the Hebrew prohibition of shatnez. Two Biblical verses prohibit wearing shatnez:
1."You shall not let your cattle mate with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; you shall not put on cloth from a mixture of shatnez (Leviticus 19:19)." 2. "You shall not sow your vineyard with a second kind of seed. . . You shall not plow with an ox and an ass together. You shall not wear shatnez--wool and linen together (Deuteronomy 22:9-11)."
Some explain the prohibition because they believed that the priestly clothes contained the mixture of wool and lien and were therefore sacred. If it was sacred, it should not be worn by those not serving in the priesthood. Others explained the prohibition as follows: "One midrash traces the prohibition against shatnez to the story of Cain and Abel. In the Torah, Abel brings God an offering of sheep, and Cain brings some sort of plant offering. For reasons not explained in the biblical text, God accepts Abel's offering, but rejects Cain's. Angry about this show of preference, Cain murders his brother. The midrash specifies that Cain brought God flax seeds, and Abel brought wooly sheep. After Cain killed Abel, God decreed that 'the offering of the sinner should not be mixed with the offering of the innocent (Midrash Tanhuma B'reishit 9:9).'"
Others interpret the verse as a command to avoid clothes through unethical standards: "The 'Commentary on the Principles of Reform Judaism,' passed by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 2004, however, reinterprets shatnez as a call for ethical production processes: 'To study the mitzvah (command) of shatnez. . . can lead us to examine labels for firms practicing oshek [oppression] through sweatshop labor or payments of a sub-minimum wage.'"
There appears to be no general agreement on the meaning of the verse. It has been suggested that idolatrous priests wore clothes containing wool and lien because they thought it to be magical. For me, I don't like to wear wool so the command is easy to obey. It would seem the best approach is to obey without understanding and that is the Hebrew way.
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